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Agents billing and usage

Learn about billing and usage for Retool Agents.

Refer to the following sections for more information about billing and usage for Retool Agents.

Billable and non-billable usage​

Billable time​

Billable time is counted from when an agent is triggered to when it returns an answer, excluding the time spent waiting for subagents, resource authentication, or human approval. Subagents will accrue their own separate billable time as they run individually. All agent runtime will be counted towards the hourly allocation, including if an agent fails to complete a task.

Non-billable time​

Non-billable runtime is the time spent waiting for subagents, resource authentication, and human approval.

Estimating agent usage​

The cost of running agents in production will depend on a few factors, including:

  • How long one task takes: The efficiency of agent tools will affect the cost, runtime, and overall performance. Improvements in efficiency come from best practices of regular testing and usage of evals, reducing errors and failed runs, and making your tools faster and more precise.
  • How many tasks you have: The volume of work your agent will execute will directly affect total runtime and overall costs.
  • Which model you use: The pricing and runtime for each agent model will depend on the complexity of the specific task. Different models will have different pricing, and more advanced models are charged at higher rates to perform tasks.

Retool recommends that your initial usage starts with the free allocation per month. Our built-in dashboards and analytics on the monitoring page are available to monitor hourly consumption and identify peak usage patterns. We recommend conducting a usage review after a few weeks to more accurately forecast ongoing requirements and predict costs.

Usage monitoring​

Admins of your organization can access the monitoring page located in the Agents tab to monitor runtime, cost, and token usage from each agent and filter to specific timeframes. Admins can compare and evaluate various models of agents side-by-side to understand the differences in tradeoffs between costs and performance. This allows for monitoring of usage and can help prevent unexpected billing overages.

Agent billing​

Free usage​

Each billing month, Retool organizations receive $50 of free agents usage. Retool Cloud organizations can get up to 20 hours of agents usage for free, depending on your chosen model.

The following free usage limits apply to the self-hosted preview release only. When agents are generally available for self-hosted organizations, all customers will be billed the standard $5/hour for BYOK usage beyond the $50 free limit.

The free usage for self-hosted organizations depends on your plan:

  • Free plan: Self-hosted Agents is not available.
  • Self-serve (non-invoiced) customer on Team and Business plans: Unlimited free usage with a self-managed LLM key.
  • Committed (invoiced) customers on Business and Enterprise plans: 10 hours of free usage with a self-managed LLM key.

Once the free monthly limit is reached, payments will be required for further Agents usage for the rest of the billing month. Free customers will have the option to upgrade plans or wait until the next billing cycle starts to resume Agents usage.

Special terms apply for customers on Retool's Startup Program. Visit our Startup Program page for details.

Usage notifications​

When an organization reaches 80% of its free usage, the organization's Admin(s) will receive an email warning them about reaching 80% of their free allotment for the month.

When an organization reaches 100% of its free usage, the organization's Admin(s) will receive an email warning them that they have reached their free usage allotment for the month.

If an organization is on the Free plan and exceeds the free usage for the month, in-progress agents will complete, and further execution will fail. The Admin(s) will be notified via email with an option to upgrade to a paid plan if they'd like to continue using Agents without interruption. Otherwise, Free organizations will wait until their next billing cycle starts to resume Agents usage.

Payment cycle​

Team and Business plan customers will receive monthly overage charges for any usage beyond the free allotment. Please note: even for customers on an annual Retool subscription, Retool Agents overages are invoiced on a monthly basis.

Enterprise or custom contract customers should discuss payment cadence with their Account Manager, in order to pay in advance or purchase bulk Retool Agents usage.

Cost​

Hourly prices vary based on which model is being used in each agent. Customers can use multiple models throughout the billing month.

Payment methods​

For Team and Business customers, any out-of-pocket overages will be charged to the card on file and will show up on each monthly invoice. This applies to organizations on monthly or annual subscriptions.

For Enterprise customers, usage is charged via credits that are built into the contract.

For customers on Retool's Startup Program, visit our Startup Program page to see how Agents are covered by each program.

Invoice structure​

Out-of-pocket usage will show up on monthly invoices with a different line item for each model used, for the amount of time (in seconds, rounded down to the nearest second). For example:

  • Used an hour (4,799 seconds) of Agents with the claude-3.7-sonnet model from Anthropic
  • Used 3 days (244,249 seconds) of Agents with the o3-mini model from OpenAI
  • Used 5 hours (16,424 seconds) of Agents with your own key